Was the Peach Pit, with its menu of fries and malteds, a credible place for the razor-thin cast of Beverly Hills 90210 to hang out? Taking burgers, malts, and fries as your base line, which is the next critical element in the American Diner Experience: a) all-day pancakes, b) neon, c) pie? Further, would Archie and Veronica eat Thai food? Would Betty? Jughead? Explain.

Few would deny that Ketsana's is thought-provoking: It is, after all, the metro's (the world's?) only Thai restaurant in a retro Fifties-style diner. There's something endlessly curious about sliding into a red-vinyl booth in a space so white, so chrome, so spic-and-span it fairly screams "a soda jerk dreams of Doris Day"--and then ordering chile-laced green papaya salad, coconut-broth tom ka soup, and some red curry mee kathree noodles. It's, like, so 21st Century.

Diana Watters

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Aside from providing conversation fodder, Ketsana's serves some very respectable Thai and Laotian food. The tom ka soup is a velvety delight, creamy with coconut milk, bobbing with salty straw mushrooms, and absolutely vivacious with big stalks of lemongrass, whole kaffir lime leaves, and slices of galanga--that spicy root the uninitiated take to be ginger. (A tureen of the tom ka costs $7.25 with chicken, pork, or fried tofu, and $10.25 with shrimp. It is served with rice and you're meant to spoon the soup over rice in your bowl; the portion is large enough to serve as many as six as a starter.)

Another standout is the pha ram long song, a dish in which the protein of your choice (again, $7.75 or $10.25) is dressed with a piquant peanut sauce, then placed on a bed of fresh-cooked spinach leaves. The result is a beautiful contrast of textures and flavors--the bright greens, the sweetly salty stewed topping, and the crunch of chopped peanuts.

The Goong Paradise ($10.25) is another excellent choice; it's a preparation of shrimp dressed with coconut milk and red curry, combined with whole straw mushrooms, green peas, and torn basil leaves in a sweet, fresh, and hot symphony.

Of the many noodle dishes on the menu, I thought the very best was the aforementioned mee kathree ($7.25), a rich, sweet combination of ground pork, scrambled egg, chopped peanuts, coconut milk, and red curry on rice noodles, all topped with fresh bean sprouts, chopped scallions, and a handful of cilantro. In fact, after a couple of visits to Ketsana's I learned that nearly anything on the menu featuring peanuts, coconut, or red curry is excellent, and that if you order carefully you can have a memorable meal.

Order carelessly, though, and your dining experience will be merely mediocre: Ketsana's doesn't do a lot of the Thai-restaurant standards as well as it does peanut and coconut dishes. For example, I honestly can't recommend the pad thai ($6.25-$10.25), which I found to range from gummy and tasteless to one-dimensional and mainly chile-hot. The papaya salad ($6.95) was one of the starchiest and least exciting versions of the dish I've had in the Twin Cities. Spring rolls ($3.95) were enormous and freshly made, but off-puttingly bland. The special spring rolls--$4.25, with shredded pork meat and pork skin instead of barbecued pork and shrimp--were better, but still not thrilling.

The dish that saddened me most was the pineapple fried rice ($6.25-$8.95), a mushy, brownish amalgam of rice and canned-tasting fruit. As I pushed it around the plate I got teary-eyed with longing for dearly, dearly departed Royal Orchid and its hollowed-out pineapple filled with herb- and fruit-bedecked rice. Sigh.

But aren't those Peach Pit vibes meant to channel nostalgia? And isn't nostalgia one of those magic forces you can't control once you conjure it up? Ketsana's does score high on other diner traditions like sweet, family-style service (please note that the restaurant is closed the first week in January--Family Vacation Week!), bargain pricing, and friendly neighborhood ambiance. It's also easily the best Thai restaurant south of 40th Street in Minneapolis, and if you live anywhere in the vicinity of I-494 and Lyndale you owe it to yourself to round up your gang and haul them here. And if you don't think you can get through a diner experience without a milk shake--why, there's a Dairy Queen right next door.

TABLEHOPPING

BEET SORBET: Pastry chef Adrienne Odom, whom many consider the most talented dessert wizard in town, is leading a demonstration dinner focusing on root-vegetable desserts. You know, root vegetables--beets, parsnips, rutabaga, etc. Think it can't be done? You've obviously never had Odom's chocolate ganache with beet sorbet and beet sauce--and if you take this class you'll learn how to make that sorbet, as well as Swedish carrot cake and fennel panna cotta. "Sweets Take Root" takes place Monday, May 22, costs $50 a person, and includes a light supper, beverage, and samples of the three desserts. For reservations call Aquavit, 80 S. Eighth St., Minneapolis, (612) 343-3333.

TENGO HAS LEFT THE BUILDING: When I found out that local sushi star Tengo had left Fuji-Ya back in January, I immediately called up my buddy Dennis Cass, a former Minnesota Monthly restaurant critic and fellow food obsessive: "I am so fucking smart," said Cass. "I really am. If you write about this, you have to tell the world that I knew Tengo wasn't there anymore. I knew it." Whereupon he let me in on his clue: A recent encounter with a less-than-stellar Fuji-Ya crab salad. The master, Cass surmised, would never have let such a crustacean fly.